Play journal: Yakuza: Like a Dragon - Entry #2 | Pick-a-beating

I move through these types of games pretty slowly. I'm that person who does side quests early, moseys around, and grinds every now and then, because I don't wanna be forced to have to do everything right before the end, because I'm not strong enough, don't have enough items, and all that shit. Plus, I just like being able to take advantage of moments when I'm not just being thrown through the story. So my progress has been slow as fuck through this new RPG focused Yakuza.

Speaking of RPG, I didn't mention the biggest change to this game in my first play journal, so lemme talk about it, now that Ichiban's Angels have been cracking skulls for a good minute.

All of the other Yakuza games featured combat, but it was your standard brawler affair that you get in most action / adventures; your Arkham City's, your God of War's, Spider-Man'ses. You hit buttons to attack, some are contextual, environments can be used, you can also do specials and finishers. Standard shit.

HOWEVER.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon throws all of that out of the window, and introduces turn-based combat to the series. A full blown RPG style battle system. Pretty similar to Persona, but without the visual flair and crazy distinct UI design. Although the Persona influence is definitely there.

In my first play journal I mentioned that Ichiban's character in many ways justifies all of the crazy shit which happens in this game, and the battles are part of that. Ichiban is a massive Dragon Quest fan. He makes a point of mentioning it constantly, and regularly correlates his day-to-day and life occurrences to tropes in RPG's. So this contextualises the switch to turn-based combat in and of itself. All of the things you'd expect from a turn-based battle system are here. Spell attacks, buffs, debuffs, a levelling up system, equipment management - but with a Yakuza edge. For example, the magic user in your party is Namba, a once-homeless man, who wields an umbrella instead of a mage's staff. And instead of casting magic, he can burp fire with a lighter and a bottle of alcohol, and summon pigeons to attack. Ichiban is your main attacker, but instead of a sword, he has a baseball bat. Then you have Adachi, who is your tank. Enemies also have all crazy manner of looks correlating to their specialty of attacks. But the thing is, Ichigo is the only person that sees all of these crazy things which occur in battles. To his party and to those he's fighting, everything is just a regular scrap in the street. Yakuza is such a crazy off-the-wall series generally, that we didn't need this context at all. But it's another instance of Yakuza thinking outside of the box and finding ways to explain the craziness, so that those new to the series can make sense of it, and also so the world of the game doesn't break beyond what it's known to be. It's clever, and lends itself to further expanding what a Yakuza game can be, which is pretty much anything.

The battle system itself is pretty bog standard, but it's robust. There are no fancy systems or mechanics that make it stand out in any way. What makes the battles truly shine in this game are the enemy types and the attacks, because they are done in a way that only a Yakuza game would do them. Battles are absolutely bonkers and will always make you smile. Even when you're kinda sick of fighting them because there are enemies every time you turn a corner in the street.

The most remarkable thing is that despite the battle system being such a HUGE change for the series, it feels oddly...right. And it doesn't disrupt the flow of the gameplay in any way, because battles in the previous Yakuza games interrupted your city treks in the exact same way. I don't miss the old combat as much as I thought I possibly would, mainly because battles are so swift, and so much of what occurred in scraps in the previous games is all in this battle system - it's just menu driven now. It's masterfully done. Even if you did prefer the ol' brawler style combat of the previous games, you won't completely hate the new battle system because it keeps the same tone and energy.

The battle system does come with its issues though. A common trait with RPG's that have turn-based combat is that when you encounter an enemy there's a fancy transition and you're transported to some place which looks a lot like the location you encountered the enemy, sans obstacles, corridors and NPC's. In Yakuza, you still get a transition, because 'RPG trope', but battles take place right in that exact location and at that exact moment. So you could be in some narrow-ass street with lampposts, bins, railings, bikes lined up on the curb and store signs, meaning that you can barely move the camera, which only has limited movement even when you're in an open space. Then there are the obstacles. Sometimes if you attack, your character will get stuck behind them and just keep running at them until they eventually clear them. This can be an annoyance if you're trying to attack an enemy during an opportune moment when an enemy is open to taking extra damage, because you'll just miss it due to some raggedy technical foolishness. Which leads onto the other issue. You can't move your characters. Your characters will automatically move around, but you can't control them. This doesn't seem like a big issue at first, until you start to realise that placement in battles is crucial...and yet you're given zero control of it. Being able to control your characters would eliminate the 'getting stuck behind objects' issue and help rectify issues with the camera.

But all in all, the battle system is decent. And the switch from brawler to turn-based isn't the game breaker that it had the potential to be. I'd actually like to see future Yakuza games develop it further.